Tank heating

[th33ngineer]

I'll take a stab at this...
With a ground pool, you fill it and drain it to the city sewer... on a ship, fresh water is at a premium, so to drain the pool you don't want to through it overboard so you pump it to a retention tank. When you are ready to refill the pool, you pump it back to the pool. It seems they want to keep it warm so they don't have to wait for the water to warm up once they refill the pool.

Too bad the retention tank isn't in the engine room. Ours was a brisk 120°F on the submarine... we did pump about 15000 gallons of fresh water overboard a day though... our fresh water generators were finicky so we ran them at full and discharged the overage. Better to have too much than not enough...

You are correct. Unfortunately our tank is in the bottom of the hull, constantly dissipating the heat of the water into the sea. Not economic to say the least. It takes several hours to reheat the water once the pool is re-filled.

 

[Diver300]

If you have got a big area of tank only separated from the seawater by a few cm of steel, you are going to need a lot of power.

How much water does it hold, and what is the area of the tank in contact with the seawater?

 

[atferrari]

Out of curiosity, may I know what a "retention tank" is? An equivalent of a "settling tank" for bunkers?

Where the water goes to, after leaving the tank?

Thanks for ignoring my question.

 

[atferrari]

I'll take a stab at this...
With a ground pool, you fill it and drain it to the city sewer... on a ship, fresh water is at a premium, so to drain the pool you don't want to through it overboard so you pump it to a retention tank. When you are ready to refill the pool, you pump it back to the pool. It seems they want to keep it warm so they don't have to wait for the water to warm up once they refill the pool.

Too bad the retention tank isn't in the engine room. Ours was a brisk 120°F on the submarine... we did pump about 15000 gallons of fresh water overboard a day though... our fresh water generators were finicky so we ran them at full and discharged the overage. Better to have too much than not enough...

Gracias Mike.

It makes sense. In old tankers without ballast tanks or void spaces between cargo and sea, bringing cargo temperature up was a pain. My experience as a Ch. Officer after loading in Arzew (Algeria) to discharge a Bayone Terminal (NJ). Just increasing 10ºC required lot of steam and time. Winter season as an added bonus!

I have always seen steam used for any kind of heating on board.